Gardening

Don't take my advice about gardening, OK?

Because I'm too excited to get started, and I'm jumping the gun.  I know that already, but I can't help myself.

Jersey and tomatoes go together like American goes with apple pie.  And I'm all excited after those last few hot days - even though the temperature has dropped down dramatically, and it's feeling more like April.

And someone told me the other day that an old italian guy told her (old italian guys really know tomatoes!) that you can put your tomatoes in as soon as you start seeing dandelions.  And yup - I'm seeing dandelions!

So even though it isn't Mother's Day yet - Mother's Day is the traditional day to put in the tomatoes - I've put a few experimental tomatoes into the garden already.

I bought a pack of seeds that I started in the house.  I got heirloom seeds from a mail order company.  Heirloom seeds are seeds that have been collected by old gardeners, and handed down over the generations, and then collected by this company to sell.  They are old fashioned and original varieties.  The way I hear it, seeds today in regular seed packets are bred to be able to grow veggies, but not to produce viable seeds.  Because if you could save one or two tomatoes and get your own seeds out of it, you don't really need to buy seeds again, do you?  So my idea is to try out these seeds, and if I like them, I'll save a few old tomatoes at the end of the season and put aside some more seeds for next year.  I wonder if that will work?  We shall see.

Well, I have a bunch of little tomato seedlings started in the house - way more than I need, actually.  I'm thinking that if I do have a garage sale at the town sale next week, I'll sell some tomato plants too!  And since I had more seedlings than pots, I put three of them into the garden already.

I'm going to talk sweetly to them and hope that they get over their shock quickly, and maybe I'll have some fine tomatoes very early in the season this year!

But I'll put the rest of them into the ground when I'm supposed to... on the weekend of Mother's Day.  They'll probably have a better chance, and one way or  another, I want nice fresh tomato salads this summer.